Concept for a solution to alliance population problems.

deejayvee · November 2022

afkpro wrote: »

in other words, no to making things fair lmao. you need and want the handicap advantage of logging into a cyrodiil where it is empty or your faction outnumbers the enemy 3 to 1 or higher for a chance at easy wins.

the fact that it's still fairly empty at those time slots should tell you why there isn't an oceanic megaserver lmao...

I know why there's not an Oceania server and accept that.

I play when it's convenient to me, same as everyone else. Something needs to be done to even out the factions, not just punish people for not living in your time zone.

afkpro · November 2022

deejayvee wrote: »

I know why there's not an Oceania server and accept that.

I play when it's convenient to me, same as everyone else. Something needs to be done to even out the factions, not just punish people for not living in your time zone.

so making things fair is punishment to you lol? you oceanic people can even out the factions yourselves over american late night hours by not stacking in 1 faction; but, you guys don't. and you guys wouldn't. that much is clear lmao.

jjjozo · November 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Maybe the campaigns are empty because the PvP itself is bad.

Campaigns are empty because PvP is bad. Absolutely.
PvP is bad because of non-existing performance of pvp servers.
It counts for every single multiplayer game, everything is fun until you die in lag and high latency. For ESO PvP it's in such a high degree that your mouse and keyboard inputs are registered once in 5 seconds.

Low pop problem and faction player amount ratio imbalance are just reactions and results of people just being simply sick of the server performance. Zone chat is permanently full of players frustration about not being able to use their abilities or not being able to even move. When you are not able to use abilities and move, you are not playing the game, it's that simple.

Fix PvP performance = fill PvP campaigns = everybody happy.

gameswithaspoon · November 2022

Let’s say you have a small group of loyal friends and you go deep into enemy territory and hold just an outpost. You work at it a couple of nights a week at least, you fight hard even when you are outnumbered.

You still can’t make a meaningful contribution to the campaign for your faction. You are only gaining 1 point per scoring evaluation and subtracting 2 from the enemy’s score. If you do not have one of your scrolls for even one hour, you have to hold that enemy outpost for 20 hours THAT day to make up for it.

Grey Host became the dominant campaign and the only consistently populated one when scrolls became worth 20 or 10 points per scoring eval- which enabled runaway scores within a few days of the start of a campaign. And this has been true since the release of the Vardenfell chapter. Reverting this change to 2 or 1 point would not be a major code change, but it might help reverse the effects.

Other things could of course be done, but this would be a simple place to start.

xylena_lazarow · November 2022

gameswithaspoon wrote: »

Grey Host became the dominant campaign and the only consistently populated one when scrolls became worth 20 or 10 points per scoring eval- which enabled runaway scores within a few days of the start of a campaign... Reverting this change to 2 or 1 point would not be a major code change, but it might help reverse the effects.

They tried this. For a while, all objectives were worth the same 1 point. What usually ended up happening was players simply ignored the scrolls, since they're a ton of effort and coordination to move, but the same payoff as holding a single resource node. Was this better or worse? A lot of players missed the excitement of scroll battles and scroll runs, but it didn't punish factions for camping their favorite outpost, which was nice.

jjjozo wrote: »

Fix PvP performance = fill PvP campaigns = everybody happy.

There's no lag in BGs... no player base either. You can really see how busted the combat system is without lag.

Urzigurumash · November 2022

Faction Lock should be lifelong, permanently bound to the player, tatted on their forehead and imprinted into their DNA

xylena_lazarow · November 2022

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Faction Lock should be lifelong, permanently bound to the player, tatted on their forehead and imprinted into their DNA

Even if they did implement much stricter faction controls, those guys who rage about zone chat spies and tri-faction conspiracies every time they lose... yea they'll still be doing that.

Urzigurumash · November 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Faction Lock should be lifelong, permanently bound to the player, tatted on their forehead and imprinted into their DNA

Even if they did implement much stricter faction controls, those guys who rage about zone chat spies and tri-faction conspiracies every time they lose... yea they'll still be doing that.

Spies?? Where!? Bring them to my kangaroo court at Woodhearth immediately

chessalavakia_ESO · November 2022

When you attempt to take Cropsford solo you will generally fail because the AI will take it back before you can capture all of it.

Could a similar approach be applied to areas that are close to a factions home during low population times where AI will patrol at intervals and will take locations back if player intervention does not occur against them?

xylena_lazarow · November 2022

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

Could a similar approach be applied to areas that are close to a factions home during low population times where AI will patrol at intervals and will take locations back if player intervention does not occur against them?

Yea the first year of this game, NPCs were really strong and would often wipe entire casual raids, but they were still little more than speed bumps for the high pop zerg (or for organized tryhard groups). When a faction has excess players, they'll have tons of guys sitting on back keeps, so those NPCs in your idea would have to be super tough...

chessalavakia_ESO · November 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

Could a similar approach be applied to areas that are close to a factions home during low population times where AI will patrol at intervals and will take locations back if player intervention does not occur against them?

Yea the first year of this game, NPCs were really strong and would often wipe entire casual raids, but they were still little more than speed bumps for the high pop zerg (or for organized tryhard groups). When a faction has excess players, they'll have tons of guys sitting on back keeps, so those NPCs in your idea would have to be super tough...

I could be off base but, my impression is that the faction control of the map frequently lasts longer than the factions actual ability to hold it against attacks due to the cost of siege coupled with the demotivating impact of logging in to see your faction is completely stuffed

The AI isn't going to be able to handle a coordinated group/large group unless they are set to be super tough like you said but, the AI might be able to act as a distraction/draw for players without being super tough and be able to beat factions that don't have the population to spare to defend against the AI.

If it didn't add too much load, you could also have other Cyrodiil faction AI attack locations relevant to them during low population times primarily in the territory of the dominant faction. (Ex: Black Daggers, Daedra, Imperials, Shadowed Path, Gray Vipers, and Goblins.

xFocused · November 2022

Reading some of these comments about how population is bad due to alliance locking and etc....but from what I can see and from the players I've talked to, population is just down because the servers/code whatever you want to call it is bad. Cyrodiil is unplayable, plain & simple. When you have unplayable servers and a dev team who is dragging their feet to make the necessary changes/fixes, players get frustrated and leave for other games

xylena_lazarow · November 2022

xFocused wrote: »

Reading some of these comments about how population is bad due to alliance locking and etc...

You seem to have missed the part where the PvP combat itself is bad. Look at BGs, no lag there.

Obviously the performance drives players away, but so does the combat. It was good once. Then the nerfs began.

xFocused · November 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

Reading some of these comments about how population is bad due to alliance locking and etc...

You seem to have missed the part where the PvP combat itself is bad. Look at BGs, no lag there.

Obviously the performance drives players away, but so does the combat. It was good once. Then the nerfs began.

Nah I didn't miss it. I just believe there's more important things to be addressed in Cyro than the combat at the moment. Can't have good combat when the server is lagging you out ever couple of minutes

xylena_lazarow · November 2022

xFocused wrote: »

Nah I didn't miss it. I just believe there's more important things to be addressed in Cyro than the combat at the moment. Can't have good combat when the server is lagging you out ever couple of minutes

I think they go hand in hand, but it's fair for players to have different priorities. Performance was bad the first few years of this game, but more players stuck around because the combat was still good. Just curious, do you enjoy BGs? Never had a performance problem there yet the queue is... not healthy.

Fruity_Ninja · December 2022

How about combine the servers- at least merge PS4 and Xbox. Maybe even NA and EU.

All of a sudden we’ll have much bigger populations in PVP again, buying us a few years before even more people leave.

Cross play for the win.

Hell as a primarily console player, I’d be happy to cross play with PC as well. No worries about their mods and advantages, at least there will be more people to fight around the clock.

Minnesinger · December 2022

Fruity_Ninja wrote: »

How about combine the servers- at least merge PS4 and Xbox. Maybe even NA and EU.

All of a sudden we’ll have much bigger populations in PVP again, buying us a few years before even more people leave.

Cross play for the win.

Hell as a primarily console player, I’d be happy to cross play with PC as well. No worries about their mods and advantages, at least there will be more people to fight around the clock.

This! If I remember correct there was supposed to be one mega server before the launch. instead we got NA/EU. Imagine having full pvp server/s 24/7 just like in the first years.

Luede · December 2022

Minnesinger wrote: »

Fruity_Ninja wrote: »

How about combine the servers- at least merge PS4 and Xbox. Maybe even NA and EU.

All of a sudden we’ll have much bigger populations in PVP again, buying us a few years before even more people leave.

Cross play for the win.

Hell as a primarily console player, I’d be happy to cross play with PC as well. No worries about their mods and advantages, at least there will be more people to fight around the clock.

This! If I remember correct there was supposed to be one mega server before the launch. instead we got NA/EU. Imagine having full pvp server/s 24/7 just like in the first years.

that doesn't make sense, zos keeps the population small on purpose so that the servers don't completely collapse. It would be no problem to fill the servers with appropriate rewards, this is just not what zos wants, so speculation about consolidation is unnecessary.